My Presidential Platform, Plank #1: A Chicken in Every Pot.
For those who want one and are willing to pay an unsubsidized price....
The press have been beating down my door and besieging me by telephone and email to find out my positions. My crack team of specialists and eggheads is preparing a package of proposals that I intend, as every good candidate does, to ignore. I have known grown men and women of some sense who have taken part in platform fights at the GOP Convention and bragged about how they put through a pro-life plank, as if planks and platforms had anything to do with actual policies. When Bob Dole was asked about some controversial position in the Republican Platform, he answered truly, "No one even reads the Platform,"
There are some good policies that could be advocated if we ever had an honest candidate, policies that addressed real problems such as the lousy chicken available to American consumers who are forced to choose one flavorless factory chicken over another. It is easy to put the blame on Tyson, but the problem is systemic in American food production, which is treated as an international industry.
For once the hippies are right. Locally grown food is better than name-brand products. This development, which is retarded in countries where the quality of what they eat is valued, is not natural. It is the result of policies that subsidize agribusiness and promote interstate commerce at the expense of small farmers and local businesses.
As President, I shall end the Big Farm monopolies by ending subsidies to agribusiness, cutting red tape that punishes small farming operations, and provide tax breaks to small farms producing authentic food. I shall also outlaw the term "organic," which means absolutely nothing, and smash all the federal regulations that have produced the nightmare known as the fastfood industry.
You have my support on this, one hundred percent.
Not sure I can support outlawing the “organic” label. In fact, I appreciate knowing which foodstuffs comprise carbon-based molecules.
I’m assuming you are joking. If the “organic” label meant anything, I would agree with your mock objection heartily, but if you look at the USDA guidelines., which are bad enough, and the exemptions, you will discover that the term is meaningless.
Dr Fleming,
Joke indeed! if poorly delivered. I just always hated the use of “organic” to mean “free from hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, & other things you don’t want to eat” in the first place. However, I am certainly no etymologist and maybe its use in this sense has some validity. Your point about the USDA guidelines is well taken.
I’m ignorant of the world of agribusiness – what’s the deal with GMO foods? I assume they’re bad, but that’s a gut reaction not based on any research (I just assume Big Agro is a reverse Midas, and anything they touch, regardless of intention, turns evil). I do try to buy food that claims to not use growth hormones or antibiotics and such, but, because of red tape and having to buy in large quantities (teenagers eat like locusts!), it’s hard to buy locally grown stuff.
GMO foods aren’t bad. They are genetically modified to withstand travel great distances and still be a healthy source of vitamins and minerals. Tomatoes are one example. Corn is genetically modified because it had the potential to form a mold. Spraying sevin dust on corn prevented corn mold. I would guess that corn is also genetically modified to stay sweet tasting because corn tends to loose it’s sweetness as soon as it is harvested. Currently, it is common to see non GMO on labels. I take it with a grain of salt. It’s more like selling product than anything else. I basically am a skeptical person. Anybody can check it out and decide for themselves.
I don’t know that genetically modified foods are bad, though it is always wise not to believe the propaganda issued by either government or industry. GMO tomatoes probably won’t do any harm, but they don’t do any good either. Indifferent to flavor and textures, the boys in the lab have engineered tomatoes with tough skin, a squarer shape, and other qualities that make for longer shelf life. The result is the supermarket tomatoes that make hydroponic tomatoes seem delicious by comparison. First they came for the tomatoes, but I wasn’t a tomato…then it was the cows, and when the humans were replaced by pod people with PhD’s I hardy noticed.
Yes, this is a good start. Once the government begins to define things such as “organic” and “family farming” be assured that folks like Mitch McConnell and his second wife, Ms. Chao, have already stock piled thousands of red chickens from Rhode Island on a small 10,000 acre family ranch back in Kentucky, gifted to them by a coal company, that is run by illegal immigrants who are feeding chickens a GMO type of corn with patent pending that outpaces Tysons foods for daily gain, market share and no taste.
I understand that there are chickens running around without wings. There is a shortage of wings to go around. It is even worse with turkey wings. Have you ever tried to buy turkey wings? You can get drumsticks and thighs, but not turkey wings.
Mr. Van Sant – I think I saw one of those wingless chickens just the other day. Or maybe it was a turkey. It had on a big black face mask and was signing a stack of Executive Orders. Can’t tell if it was organic or not, but I suspect it was definitely being pumped full of hormones or stimulants or drugs of some kind. Actually, from the way it was running around, it might have been headless, too.